Project PERSIAN (Labyrinth)
Attempts by the UNSC to create supersoldier-grade personnel are well documented - the original ORION Project, SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III, TROJAN, VOLSUNG, and a number of shadier projects that are of dubious authority. Less well-documented are Insurrectionist attempts to field their own counterparts, developing their own above-average personnel in their determined but misguided fight to liberate themselves from the only thing standing between them and the Covenant. During the early years of the Human-Covenant War, or Great War as it has since come to be known, various cells attempted to use prototype stimulants provided by corporate backers, the infamous "rumbledrugs", but while it provided an instant boost to cognitive function, muscular density, reflex action and pain tolerance, the effects were short-lived and came with lethal side-effects. Rumbledrugs would be used across a number of Insurrectionist fronts, either by soldiers who were not told about the after-effects and were deemed disposable, or by kamikazes who didn't care. Though they would become a major morale boost and propaganda coup, they would have little real effect on the war effort - there is little a dying man with super strength can do when a Covenant cruiser is pouring plasma onto a city. Understanding their critical position, on the verge of collapse, a cabal of Insurrectionist leaders, primarily from the United Rebel Front and including future-turncoat Admiral Ulysses Lee, met in approximately 2529 to pool their resources and decide what would be done. Rumours had already spread of UNSC supermen clad in advanced armour, who could kill an entire army in their bunks, or turn the tide of battle against the Covenant. The Spartans by this time had already become a morale boost, even before their official disclosure by ONI. When Blue Team, lead by John-117, attacked an Insurrectionist missile base in 2531, this was all the proof needed to convince them that not only were the rumours true, but they could be replicated. These Insurrectionists would decide upon a radical course of action - the PERSIAN Initiative. History Recruitment The project's leaders based their name on the ancient Persian empire for a number of reasons - the symmetry they had with the military history of Sparta, the namesake of the modern Spartans, and the sheer size of it, an exercise in egotism. If they had been more historically knowledgeable, they would have realised that the naming was ironic, since the original Spartans were famous for their pyrrhic victory against the Persian army. Nevertheless, the name was retained through its history, perhaps out of sentimentality, and perhaps because Doctor Eskander Bahram regarded it as a tribute to his homeland. The first actions undertaken by PERSIAN were retroactive - personnel within Project SPARTAN-II, dissatisfied with their treatment or with ethical concerns over the work done, had already smuggled information out as best they could, but little more than basic details: that the augmentations that the SPARTAN-II candidates recieved would ideally take to prepubescent subjects - children. Though some balked at the idea of using their own children in the experiments, others proposed that the ends justified the means - that in order to further their efforts to liberate the colonies, they would need to employ dirty tactics. Genetic screening was begun, ironically using the same ruse the UNSC had - child vaccination. Convergent with SPARTAN-III, PERSIAN first visited those candidates in orphanages, posing as prospective adoptive parents, and interviewed candidates. Those who volunteered were "adopted", using fake names, and convenient "accidents" arranged to cover up their disappearance. Those who did not were simply abducted, and the orphages burnt to the ground to cover their disappearance as well, with wealthy corporations charitably stepping in to cover the cost of reconstruction - in reality, the benefactors of PERSIAN. A very few were abducted from families, but PERSIAN preferred candidates who had lost something to either the Covenant or the UNSC, which they hoped would provide a similar drive to the Spartans. These children were trained with military discipline by former UNSC mercenaries hired by Admiral Lee, who paid less attention to the childrens' well being than they should have. A number of accidental fatalities resulted in the summary execution of one mercenary, who was discovered to be abusing the children. Further incidents would cause concern, especially among recruits abducted forcibly, and the project's psychologists noted a covert "resistance" group, a collection of individuals who actively tried to escape their captivity. Initially, this was ignored, or even encouraged, in the hopes that it would foster creativity and determination in the candidates. By 2534, the project was beginning to lose support from its wealthy backers, especially as rumours reached them about the miraculous properties of the Spartans miraculous MJOLNIR armour. Although PERSIAN had acquired the remnants of Randall's original suit, it had been damaged beyond salvage, and the backers began asking whether the traits they had hoped to achieve were more due to the armour than the wearer. Doctor Bahram reassured them that his best men were working on the development of parallel gear - in reality, he had simply contacted Codename: DRACULA and requested to be part of Project ELERI, and hoped to acquire DRACULA's version of MJOLNIR. Exactly why DRACULA agreed to the request would remain a mystery until Operation: HARKER. Other suits would be acquired by Lee as he finally revealed himself as a traitor to the UNSC, working with Codename: SELENA to steal a pair of advanced HAYABUSA prototype powered armour. The next action was more overt, and more problematic - the acquisition of one of these Spartan supermen, dead or alive. By studying their body, the project members hoped that they could deduce the processes used to augment them, and that with sufficient funding and secrecy, this process could be reproduced. Efforts to ambush UNSC forces, in the hopes of luring out Spartan operatives, continued to meet with failure until late 2532, during the Covenant's attack on New Venezuela. While participating in the planet's evacuation operations, SPARTAN-II Randall-037's dropship was shot down by Insurrectionist artillery. All personnel aboard the craft were killed by the crash except for Randall, who was nevertheless badly wounded. Posing as UNSC rescuers, rebel soldiers extracted him off the planet via cryonic suspension, smuggling him to a secret location. While the rebels initially kept up the pretence of a UNSC hospital base while Randall recovered from his wounds, he became suspicious, and attempted to escape in early 2531. He was recaptured, but only after thirty days of the Spartan waging a brutal guerilla war against his captors, acquiring weapons, suppies, and attempting to create a COM beacon to alert UNSC forces to his location. He was finally subdued while attempting to launch the beacon, though not before killing more than fifty of his captors. Abandoning any pretence of hospitality, his captors threw him into solitary confinement, keeping him under heavy security. Medical inspections were conducted by first pumping anaesthetic gas into the room - initial attempts vastly underestimated the dosage required, and resulted in Randall's second escape, this time captured after boarding a shuttle and attempting to make a slipspace jump - the ship's drive had been removed for repairs, a fact that Randall was not aware of, and his ship was boarded by an armed response team. Again, rebel forces took heavy casualties while trying to recapture one man. Returned to solitary confinement, Doctor Bahram would come to regard Randall with a mixture of admiration and pity - pity for his predicament, and admiration at his resilience. The medical examinations would prove enormously helpful, allowing Insurrectionist doctors to pinpoint the exact augmentations and hazard rudimentary guesses as their implementation. Information bought from insiders at Project CHISEL would allow them to modify and improve these augmentations, in hopes of improving success rates. In 2538, the candidates were selected and augmented. Of fourteen candidates, only three would survive the process, including Miranda Talavera. In 2538, she would see her first deployment alongside her fellow augmentees during the Battle of Coral, engaging Riker-012, the beginning of a long history between the two. Operation: THERMOPYLAE Rumours of Insurrectionist attempts at creating supersoldiers had circulated for years, but ONI had dismissed the majority of them, with good reason. The aforementioned rumbledrugs took a worse toll on the users than those who faced them, and other attempts to field powered armour had been laughable failures, especially in light of the UNSC's own covert deployments. VAJRA assets had come up against rebel powered armour in 2528, only to effortlessly overpower their rebel counterparts. Spartan-II teams had brought down a number of blackmarket networks trading in supposed "augmentations", most fake, and Spartan-III teams had destroyed a training camp on Cyprus VII. But as ONI looked at the larger picture, the pattern began to emerge, and was eventually handed over to Codename: SHOGUN, the agent responsible for sniffing out Project CHISEL, as part of his fledgling Operation: VORAUSSICHT. At the time, funding for his operation was reluctant, given ONI's hesitance to commit to uncovering its own dirty secrets. However, as SHOGUN assembled available data and pieced it together, he concluded that the sudden upsurge in demands for augments, combined with unusual civil activity among suspected Insurrectionist hotspots, and the betrayal of Admiral Lee, were linked - an astronomical leap of deductive thinking, but an accurate one. The attacks on Coral, Gold 512 and the Third Battle of Marathon would confirm ONI's worst fears - that an Insurrectionist group had succeeded in training, arming and deploying SPARTAN-killers. In light of these events Members *'Doctor Eskander Bahram' (Codename: OXFORD) - a talented polymath, Bahram trained at Eridanus University and earned doctorates in chemistry, biology, engineering and quantum physics, and was offered numerous positions both in the military and in civilian corporations. None of these interested him, however, and he joined the Insurrection in 2526 after overtures from URF agents. Interested in levelling the playing field between the URF and UNSC, his interest was spurred less by support for the rebel cause than a curiosity to observe two equal human factions in combat, analyse the techniques and strategies they employed and developed, and apply this data. He possessed an almost sociopathic regard for those around him, manipulating them as needed to achieve his own ends, and attracting a dark reputation as a fierce puppet master. He proposed Project PERSIAN to a select committee of Insurrectionist organisations, and his proposal was approved. Over the next nine years, Bahram would oversee the training and augmentation of his candidates. More importantly, he would continuously return to interrogate Randall-037, sometimes for specific details pertaining to the project, other times simply to muse on his position and accuse the UNSC of abandoning him, hoping to convert him to the rebel cause. Bahram possessed many connections to other shadowy figures investigated by VORAUSSICHT, such as Codenames OXFORD, CAIN and DRACULA. *'Admiral Ulysses Lee' - a former fleet commander, Lee betrayed the UNSC during a critical moment during Operation: VIRTUE in the Polynesian Expanse. Even before that, he was heavily involved in the Insurrection, believing that a human race governed by a centralised world government was a recipe for disaster, and was one of the major financial and military backers for Project PERSIAN, embezzling money from military financial sources and overseeing the recruitment of mercenary security and training forces. Afterwards, he would assume total command of PERSIAN, operating from his flagship, the [[URF Hollow Men|URF Hollow Men]]. He would be killed during Operation: THERMOPYLAE. *Codename SELENA - formerly a well-respected ONI operative, SELENA joined the URF during Operation: VIRTUE, stealing two prototype HAYABUSA powered armour suits and killing the majority of the ONI team guarding them. *'Miranda Talavera' (PERSIAN-02, BETA) - one of only three successful augmentees of PERSIAN, Talavera was eventually the only functional survivor of Project PERSIAN, the rest either dead, some by her own hand, or captured and incarcerated by the UNSC. Talavera would become a freelance bounty hunter and mercenary after leaving the Insurrection, eventually captured by Sangheili forces for crimes committed against them. *'Randall-037' - captured by PERSIAN in 2532, presumed KIA but designated MIA by ONI, Randall was held captive for eight years and resisted his captors during his imprisonment. Examination of his body would lead PERSIAN to reverse-engineer many of his augmentations to varying degrees of success, and perform these procedures on their own candidates. Randall was recovered by Operation: THERMOPYLAE and returned to service, albeit outside of Naval Special Warfare Command, and would be presumed MIA until the end of the Great War. Involved Projects HAYABUSA Scheduled for transfer to a secure research facility in the Polynesian Expanse, two suits of HAYABUSA Powered Assault Armour, developed as an alternative for MJOLNIR, were being transported aboard the UNSC What E'er Betide as the star system was invaded by the Covenant. Through the actions of Codename: SELENA, these suits were stolen as she officially joined the URF, intended for use by PERSIAN-01 and 03 respectively in combat operations against Spartan forces during the Battle of Coral. With the eventual deaths of both operatives, neither suit would be recovered, severely setting back the project and allowing MJOLNIR to dominate the supply of Powered Armour to SPARTAN-II and select SPARTAN-III teams and other personnel. ELERI Run by Codename: DRACULA, ELERI was ostensibly a side-project for MJOLNIR, intended to develop technical improvements and replacements as the technology aged. Instead, it worked on improving it beyond intended capabilities, and developed its own designs based on the Mark IV. Although no reason for agreeing to Bahram's request for a suit was ever given, VORAUSSICHT suspected that it was considered a test deployment, a chance to see their product in the field, before they moved ahead with further development. The prototype suit would be used by PERSIAN-02, Miranda Talavera, until her capture by Sangheili forces, and would never be recovered. Behind the Scenes